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gizmo_mathboy writes: "The 9th Circuit Court has ruled that not being able to type does not give one protection/privilege under the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA). This article on Yahoo! has information concerning the case."

The minute I read the article, I realized what we'd be seeing in this thread on/.... lots of modded up (+2, Funny) jokes about laziness, mocking posts saying RSI and carpal tunnel don't exist, etc, etc. Sad, really, that things are that predictable...

Obviously, not every single person claiming to have a disability actually has one. The guys with temporary paper tags in their windows filling up the handicap spaces so I can't park close enough to unload my walker from the car are very suspect... but just from what I'm reading here, this looks legitimate rather than someone being 'Lazy'.

And in her chosen profession, yes, not being able to type is a serious problem. As the third judge pointed out, in modern life in general typing is becoming more and more of a critical skill unless you wanna stuff tacos for a living. (CmdrTaco?) It's not fair to punt someone from the line of work they've trained for just because they COULD do something else that doesn't involve typing.

So, if you take as truth that we are dealing with a legit disability here and it's one that directly relates to her livelihood... the issue then becomes 'Well, what can be done?'. To that, I'm not sure. It sounds like lots of accommodations have already been made, to the point where they've run out of things that can make the situation more bearable for the reporter and allow her to do her job. I'm not sure if firing was appropriate, but they have hit a wall. That's the real issue here; not if she's faking it, but how can this be handled in a feasible and reasonable way?

You're right, but what do you suggest? The bottom line is that this woman is incapable of doing her job anymore. Furthermore, her employer has made every reasonable (and from the sounds of it, some exceptional) attempt to keep her healthy and able to work.

If she can't do her job, then the company shouldn't be forced to keep her on. She received long term disability, she received worker's compensation, and now she's claiming discrimination because they won't pay her to not do her job. In this particular case, what I think she deserves a big smack on the head.

Does she have an injury? Most definitely. Is it a permanent disability? With regards to her job, yes--but that shouldn't make her automatically entitled to keep that job. Get out! Deal with the fact that you've worked yourself out of this particular career path, and find something else to do!

Or put another way, you mention that you use a walker. Would you file a discrimination suit if you got turned down for a job as a jogging instructor?

Or put another way, you mention that you use a walker. Would you file a discrimination suit if you got turned down for a job as a jogging instructor?

As I was expecting -- another invalid comparison I've seen bandied about in this thread... because obviously I wouldn't have been applying to be a jogging instructor in the first place, I'd be looking for a job that fit well with my skills AND disability. There is a key difference which a pat one-liner like this ignores...

The situation here is not someone looking for work and being turned down, it's someone who had work in the first place and was quite capable of doing the work, then we have an injury scenario and the disability arises. There are always alternatives to giving someone the boot if accommodations won't allow them to continue on in their current role.

I'm reminded of a situation in the World Wrestling Federation (probably not a popular show with/.'ers, but read on) where a wrestler named Darren Drozdov was paralyzed from the neck down due to an on-job accident in the ring. Clearly he would not be wrestling again -- but the company paid for his therapy and continued to employ him as a columnist for their website instead rather than ejecting him for being unable to continue his then-current job. If a guy who can't even MOVE his hands can write a weekly column, why can't something be done with the reporter in question? She has value in her talents as a writer, even if the physical process of writing is an obstacle. If not having her continue in her same role, maybe in a similar one where her talents can be used while working around the accident.

However, I will grant that if nothing else can be done, if there are no roles she wants or they want her for and the injury simply is too debilitating, then her continued work for the company is not likely. That's where REASONABLE comes into the phrase Reasonable Accommodations; there's a fuzzy line after which it's too much to be expected to cover. Once you exhaust the possibilities, it is time to move on and find some other direction to take with your life. I'm simply not certain that is the case here.

I will commend the company for going out of their way to help her out and try to make things work; under ADA, they were compelled to do SOMETHING, but they've done more than the bare minimum. (That may be the source of dissent, that her accommodations can be seen as luxuries to folks who haven't experienced her disability. 'Daily massage' would sound like a luxury to someone who doesn't suffer chronic, crippling back pain.) I'm simply wondering if they couldn't do more given how other people with more crippling disabilities are still capable of doing jobs like hers with accommodations, like Darren Drozdov. Maybe they couldn't, but maybe they could and simply gave up before that point of unreasonablity.

(Of course, it's a concise Yahoo style article, so we don't have all the facts. Keep in mind we're dealing with a lot of speculation in all directions. Oh, how I hate the Reuters style...)

"As I was expecting -- another invalid comparison I've seen bandied about in this thread... because obviously I wouldn't have been applying to be a jogging instructor in the first place, I'd be looking for a job that fit well with my skills AND disability. There is a key difference which a pat one-liner like this ignores...

OK, that's fair--it was a cheap shot on my part. However, you also refer to her problem as an injury, which implies (in my mind) that something happened at some particular point to cause it. Dropping an axe on your foot is an injury. What she has is a degenerative disfunction. Furthermore, it was bad enough that she first raised it as a legal issue in 1994, seven years ago! When it got that bad, she should have started looking forward towards the day when her career would be at an end, and she'd have to find something else to do.

As you say, we're both dealing with our interpretations of a thin article (which drives me equally nuts). It definitely sounds to me, though, that this woman has been using the law and the courts to avoid taking any responsibilty for her own health and life. I'm living on the ragged edge of low-grade RSI, and am starting to make plans already for the time when I can't type and have to do something else. Why didn't she spend those seven years doing something like that?

So, according to this lady's argument any athlete should be eligible to for disabled status if they develop tendonitis. Thats just nuts. Yes, it sucks that she *can't* type anymore, but that is a basic function for her job and if she can't do it she has no right to expect to keep her job.

The fact that using a computer is so essential to modern life that teaching that skill universally has become embedded in our national educational policy must inform our understanding of the ADA's disability definition.

Using a computer is not essential to modern life, just as having a new pair of Skechers is not essential to my daughter's happiness. (And just what do we do to teach kids computing skills? Let them draw pictures & try to find pr0n on the web.) The ADA does not say that you are entitled to everything you had before you were disabled; it says you must have a fair shot at a job in spite of your disability. Cleary, she no claim.

I was doin unix support @ lucent and we hade to work to get this user's CDE fonts *HUGE* [think like 8x3 chars on a 21" monitor] even then the user had to have their nose like 10 inches (.3M) from the screen !!! The user had some degenerative eye disease

The shocking part is... the user drove themself to work everyday, and the car was dent free.

Isn't a disablility something that can't be fixed? By that I mean that someone who is disabled and can't walk is stuck like that. They can't just decided one day to learn to walk. But that is exactly what this lady is claiming. If this lawsuit went thruogh then I would have sued because I don't know how to do brain surgery and therefor diserve disability. This is just another moronic lazy person trying to get off easy. Learning to type isn't that bad. Besides, what is she typeing? Would her boss really care if she used dictation software? What about hand writing recignition software? If I was a boss I wouldn't care how she did it as long as it met two conditons:

They did the job, and did it with reasonable/acceptable speed

Any extra hardware/software they need to perform this task, they pay for.

Now obviously if she didn't have hands, that would be something different, but from reading the article the impression that I got was that she was perfectly fine physically.

Is the question really whether or not she can still type? Or is it whether or not her carpal tunnel has rendered her unable to work?

The court made the point that she is not injured to the point that her daily life activities are impared. And even though she may not be able to keep up with the pace of typing at her old job, there are ways to be employed in her field that don't involve so much typing. She's not shut out of her field the way that, say, a truck driver would be if he went blind.

Does anyone have a right to be able to keep working at the same job after they get injured? What about minor league baseball players that get career-ending injuries, even debilitating injuries? They can't engage in their chosen profession anymore, and they haven't made tons of money yet so they can retire, but none of them claim disability. The good ones become coaches, and the bad ones go into a totally diffenent field. Maybe that's a bad example, because baseball players don't expect to be playing until they're 55, but you get what I mean.

Now, the job likely caused the carpal tunnel, but that's a different issue altogether. Regardless of what caused it, she has it now, and unfortunately has to live with it now.

I'm certainly not trying to make light of this woman's problem, because it is serious. I'm just wondering where you draw the line that says that a person can or can't find work in their field due to their injuries or disabilities. If a person can't continue at their job, but can do a similar job, does that count as being "substantially limited" in your abilities?

Your reply seems to be one of the more thoughtful ones in the discussion, and I agree with you. I had to sit on a jury several years ago that decided a disability case, and it was gut-wrenching. In our case the person had done manual labor most of her life and was unsuited by education for any viable alternative.

What I can't figure out is why voice recognition was deemed impractical. It would appear to be the most suitable method here.

"In this case, Thornton was able to perform a wide range of manual tasks, including grocery shopping, driving, making beds, doing laundry and dressing herself," wrote Judge Michael Daly Hawkins in Thornton v. McClatchy Newspapers, 01 C.D.O.S. 7070. "Her inability to type and write for extended periods of time is not sufficient to outweigh the large number of manual tasks that she can perform."

I find it a little odd that domestic tasks are being weighed evenly against workplace tasks... as far as I can see, isn't this trying to assess her fitness in the workplace?

I would have thought being unable to do the main (?) part of her work would be substantially limiting... or is the limitation for living as a whole and not just for working?

*pondering*

on the practical side, teaching has been suggested, maybe she'll have some luck there...

I work in Disability Insurance and for SSI Disability to kick in, it is necessary for the claimant to prove that if they are not blind, or deaf, or missing limbs, they must not be able to perform in 'any' work.

You are not considered disabled if you can only not work in 'your' field.

In this case, she can no longer perform her job after much accomodations, but it is obvious that she can work somewhere else, and is not disabled outside the work place.

Well.. I typically "lean left" politically, but in this case, I agree with the courts. It appears that the employer made reasonable efforts to accommodate the reporter.

I wonder what type of medical treatment she had... if I remember correctly, there are surgical techniques that can be performed to correct these types of injuries.

I also wonder how much effort she put into researching assistive technologies- other than voice recognition. In 1997, voice recognition technology might not have been adequate, but currently, I think that's a very viable option. Via Voice appears to be a great product (of course, I'm making that judgement based only on the demo's I've seen).

She's got all kinds of employment opportunities.. it looks like she's just looking for an easy way out. When people are put into a difficult situation, they can play one of two roles: the "helpless victim" and the "adapt and overcomer". I saw a woman once who had no arms but still used a computer. She typed with her toes. If that woman can use a computer, I see no reason why the reporter in this article could not adapt and overcome her injuries. It looks like she's rather be a "helpless victim".

my wrists have started to hurt a lot these days. Ive been trying to change the workstation, exercise, etc, with mixed results. I type for a living - they'll fire me if I can't, and I have bills to pay. But since I could still flip burgers I am not disabled ?

Keep in mind the judges that rendered this decison get a fat pension FOR LIFE - they have no idea what it will mean to have to choose between a fuel bill and a box of mac and cheese.

What if you have a Masters in Computer Science, and you have a car accident and damage your hands to the point of not being able to use a computer. According to this ruling, would they just tell the poor guy that he has to go flip burgers for the rest of his life?

"In this case, Thornton was able to perform a wide range of manual tasks, including grocery
shopping, driving, making beds, doing laundry and dressing herself," wrote Judge Michael Daly
Hawkins in Thornton v. McClatchy Newspapers, 01 C.D.O.S. 7070. "Her inability to type and
write for extended periods of time is not sufficient to outweigh the large number of manual tasks
that she can perform."

They didn't define 'extended' periods ? 10 minutes , 20 ?

As for the pain of CTS I know it all to well (thank God for my Kinesis keyboard)... I also had surgery in Feb to repair torn ligiments and shorten the arm bone (the cause of the torn ligaments). After that my CTS improved in that arm (now I just pray that my other arm gets better)....

One, get a better analogy -- if you can't use your hands well enough to use a computer, then you won't be able to flip burgers...:^)

Two, if you can't do the job -- for whatever reason -- then you shouldn't have it. Yes, that is kind of harsh, but take another example. A brilliant surgeon loses the use of his hands -- would you still let him operate on you? Would anyone? Should his hospital be forced to keep him employed in the same position?

What if you are an artist and become colour blind?
What if you are a pilot and develop mild epilepsy?
Hell, what if you are a sailor and develop severe sea sickness?

It's bad luck. Life sucks somtimes. You have to get on a deal with it. These days people think the world owes them something, that they have some kind of right to be compensated for really bad things happening.

There is no such right. If I get hit by lightening and paralysed from the waist down, our society will keep me alive. It will give me a home, food, some level of nursing care perhaps. Hopdfully my friends and family will give me something more. But society does not, and should not, give me recompense for my misfortune. It should not pay for me to go on disabled people's skiing holidays just because I could have gone skiing before. It should not require everyone and their dog to bend over backwards to make my life better. It does not give me any moral superiority over anyone at all.

Sometimes, life just sucks. It's nice to know that, unlike most people in the world, when we get blinded, crippled, or otherwise screwed up, we will not have to walk the streets in filthy rags begging, or to stare at the concrete walls of a hospital for the rest of our days.

What if you are an artist and become colour blind?
What if you are a pilot and develop mild epilepsy?
Hell, what if you are a sailor and develop severe sea sickness?
It's bad luck. Life sucks somtimes. You have to get on a deal with it. These days people think the world owes them something, that they have some kind of right to be compensated for really bad things happening.
Is it bad luck if the artist went blind due to paint thinner being splashed into her eyes at work? What if the employer did not supply the artist with appropriate safety supplies to keep it from happening in the first place? Is the artist then a lazy ass because she goes after the employer under the ADA?
Surely the pilot isn't going to develop mild epilepsy due to flying a plane -- unless he experiences an injury while doing so.
The point you fail to see is the injury is due to excessive typing -- doing a work-related task, probably *at* work or at least *doing* work for the company with whom she was employed. While I don't think I have enough information to determine whether or not she's "substantially limited" I do believe that given the information I do have, it *did* seem a little excessive for them to terminate her.
Either way, just because she can't do what she is experienced in any longer doesn't mean she is a lazy oaff for not wanting to change careers. Not only is there a factor of not WANTING to change careers, but most people who are 40+ years old, i would think, would have a hard time finding a new career to sustain themselves.
Try a little sympathy for the person's situation. You're probably in the computer industry, like most of us are. Heaven forbid if you're one of the unlucky of us that gets incredibly crippling carpal tunnel. Maybe if that happens, we can all visit you at McDonald's to tell you how much life sucks.
But then, we probably wouldn't understand.

Absolutely- and thanks for the perspective, it's what I needed to hear.

Articles like this always tend to freak me out. I'm one of the more autistic geeks out there- couldn't finish school, couldn't keep a normal job because of 'Asperger's Syndrome', a sort of communication-enabled autism. Nobody knew what the hell it was when I was growing up. I developed an ulcer and tried everything from pizza cook to inventory and stockroom for a guitar pickup company, continually getting 'fired in sorrow' by people who knew that I was killing myself _trying_ to do what they wanted, but something was just not fitting somewhere. I turned to drugs (BAD F**KING MOVE) which helped stave off suicide for the time being. I ended up in debt, in a homeless shelter, from there to a psych ward (voluntarily- beat the homeless shelter as long as I behaved well enough to be legitimately allowed to refuse psych meds) and it was there that I found an advocate that got me on social security Disability.

That has meant a lot over the last 6 years or so. I'd never been able to live free from fear of homelessness or hunger before. Your mention of 'skiing holidays' was wonderful because it put things in perspective- I live on about $6K a year. No car (I don't consider myself fit to drive), no DVD player, no cable TV, yada yada. And yet being free from hunger and the destruction of my former life is such a blessing that I feel guilty when reading the harangues of people with ten or twenty times the income and resources of me!

I used to be lazy- or something that looked like it but was more like being stressed into immobility. Once I had the ability to define things on my own terms for a while, it turned out I wasn't lazy, and now I even court RSI (;) ) doing things that I like, or things that I mostly like that seem to be a path out of Disability towards a niche I can actually handle. For instance, I'm doing things related to costuming and finding there are actually people out there who'll pay money for that. Great! And so I do that for 12 hour days, alternating with days where I can't face it and sit back and don't do it anymore. I always liked audio and sound engineering, and one thing I taught myself over the last couple years is programming (in 'REALbasic'- sort of RAD language like a cleaner VB), and I now maintain an audio mastering program that I wrote for my own use- but GPLed.

*ramble* sorry for the ramble. All this strikes _very_ close to home. The upshot is, actually, that I don't have total sympathy for this reporter. I think it's great if she gets SSI and is allowed to live on about 6K a year (trust me, one can) to provide a space for her to learn what else she can do. I _don't_ think she is entitled to stick to what she _thinks_ she 'is' in life. At different times, I've thought I 'was' a cook, a stockroom person, a writer for The Absolute Sound (got several articles published actually), a Mac tech, etc. I don't believe any of these things really were so suitable that I should have been allowed to _stick_ myself in that role permanently. I'm glad I moved on from those things, and can draw on all of it as I continue in life.

I think the biggest reason this woman deserved to lose this particular case is because life changes, seemingly faster and faster, and you can't put down an anchor. The most you can ask for is a damn good life raft. I have that, I use it- I don't bitch that the government doesn't give me more money or expect it to under-write the possible paths _away_ from disability for me. It'll take longer for me to chisel out a niche in society this way. That's okay. By the time I do, the niche may not last, but I'll have got good enough at chiseling out niches that I'll no longer fear anything.

My advice to this reporter would be: can you sit back and take stock without fear of homelessness and starvation at this point, and what other roles in life could you see yourself filling?

When someone files for disability, they receive money from the federal government stating that they cannot work. Say some construction guy has been working on houses for 20 years and is finally to old and worn out (due to injuries) that he can no longer build houses or whatever. He files for disability to help him live. Well what happens when a 55 year old programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? I guess you should hope by the time you reach that age you can dictate your code to the computer. I think this is not as obvious as it first seems.

She has another very clear shot at $$ from her employer. Under recent changes in California law, virtually everyone is disabled if they have a disorder or a condition that merely limits a major life activity (which includes working).
The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to rule on this part of the law.

Personally, I plan on retiring before I hit 55. There is this neat strategy called "not living beyond your needs", and an other called "taking advantage of your companies 401k plan". I don't mean to sound harsh, but talk to a financial advisor. Take control of your own future.

What happens when a 55 yo programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? If he is smart, and has planned well, he bids his currrent employer a tearful goodbye, and spends the rest of his days in the carribean.

The government in the US is terribly inconsistent. There was a story back in 1999 about a phone sex operator suing for workers compensation because she got carpel tunnel from masturbating on the job . She won. On a fundamental level, the big difference is that the phone sex worker could have conceivably still performed her job because her voice is the only essential capability needed for it. A reporter, on the other hand, would be seriously put out by the loss of her hands. Something is terribly backwards in these outcomes.

Oh well... I'm probably missing something here. Perhaps qualifiying as "disabled" under the ADA is more stringent than the requirements for workers comp. Or perhaps, as another poster mentioned, there is more to this case than the defense attorney is letting on. Or maybe this phone sex worker story is an urban legend (a Salon article [salon.com] was the most reputable reference I could find to back it up). I'm hoping something like this will explain the discrepency here.

A number of the responses speak to whether the inability to type is a disability with regard to the job. Of course it is, but that isn't the issue. In fact, a law that required employers to let people who cannot do the job do the job would be stupid, even in this age of stupid laws.

A purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act (which I do not necessarily agree with) is to let people who are disabled in life be employed. The idea is that a blind person ought to be able to find some employment that they can do and not have an employer turn them away because they are blind and a nuisance. The idea is not (I hope) to prohibit employers from turning a person away because they cannot do the job.

So, if a person cannot type, they should not be entitled to a job that requires typing. (Of course, if an employer caused the disability, perhaps they should be liable for that.) And since typing does not prevent most of life's activities and not any critical activities and, in all likelihood, does not prevent a person from finding some other job, this disability does not qualify for protection by law from discrimination.

Again, the ADA is intended to protect people who would be discriminated against on grounds unrelated to their ultimate ability (that is, with remediation) to do the job, not to protect people who would be discriminated against on grounds related to their ability. (I think the ADA goes too far, protecting people who will have much less net productivity than more qualified workers, but this is unrelated to whether it does apply in this case.)

The article listed a bunch of accommodations her employer obviously made to help this woman continue on in her job, so they probably aren't heartless bastards. Plus, just because you can't type doesn't mean you can't use some sort of voice recognition/dictation software in lieu of a keyboard.

I'm a wholehearted supporter of the ADA, but so many suits today are on the fringes of what the original legislation was supposed to protect. And, regardless of the fact that employers win over 90% of ADA related cases (many due to the "undue burden" clause), frivolous cases such as this only spawn more frivolous cases.

I was involved in an accident a few years ago that left me missing two fingers on my left hand. That of course make normal keyboarding impossible. I am an IT professinal and I have never been cut any slack becasue of my (and I hate using this term) disablity, and never thought I deserved any either, I have to applaud the court for not buckling under pressure and finally saying that SOMETHING was NOT a disablity.

We basically have the defense attorney's side of the story. The story basically suggests that she became too much of a burden on the company (cost wise) and they fired her. What happens if the other side of the story is she came in 2 hours late, took a 3 hour lunch and left at 3:00 in the afternoon while hanging out at the coffee machine most of the day? I know it's a gross exaggeration, but where is the company's side? I posted earlier that I supported disability for this kind of issue, but I think there must be something more going on behind the scenes in this issue that we have not been told.

As devastating as it must be to find that you can no longer type 120 WPM, every occupation has its hazards, heck, normal day to day life has them too. RSI is a well-known condition, but until a 'new' keyboard is developed which doesn't require such finger-wrist-contortion that's just life.

When did this 'shit-happens' -> 'let's sue' conversion of society (especially in the US) take place? I know she lost her job, but she couldn't do it anymore. Footballers who get old get layed off, models who lose their looks loose their jobs, typists who can't type loose their jobs... life sucks, get over it.

Is typing-imparement a disability? I guess so, it's certainly a problem. However, if said disability was self-inflicted? She was using office equipment, but I'm sure they wouldn't have objected to her using her own keyboard if she had one that didn't cause her problems.

At the end of the day, this problem wouldn't have 'just happened', it would have got worse and worse. A doctor may well have advised her to change her vocation. To leave the problem to get to a critical stage without doing anything (other than change furniture) is just plain stupid.

This is pretty self explanitory, no? If you can't do the job, then you should not be employed to do said job. I remember the big whoopla about the lowering of standards of physical strength for certain jobs (firefighters in particualar). Immagine the loss of family members in a house fire because a small weak firefighter couldn't carry them out. Well dear reader, take comfort in the knowlege that your loved one died so that a person could do what they wanted to do for a living, rather than what they were qualified for.

In this case, the injury was caused by years of typing at work. So why shouldn't she be recompensed like anyone else disabled by on-the-job injuries?

Surely this is a risk of the job, like breaking your leg in football?

I mean, how many people who type nowadays DON'T know about RSI? If you don't know that after being in front of a keyboard for 24 years, your foolish. I have already considered the possibility of getting RSI later in life, weighed it up with my wish to be a software developer, and decided that I am prepared to live with it if (or more likely, when) the time comes.

The analogy with football is the best here - the risk is known, perhaps typists who are _that_ worried should get insurance in case they develop RSI?

I've always thought so, and at times (a bug that I'd been staring at for a week) wished I didn't consider it dishonest to do so. I have better things to do with my life then sit 50 feet from the nearest window on a bright sunny day like today. Or maybe my disability is just that I don't have the right personality to be a fishing celeberty and put out on of those fish in the north woods shows...

It all comes down to "employment at will". In cases like football players, the expiration of a contract does not imply that the employers are required to offer a new contract. The same with models.

In almost any (non-contract) job in the US, you can quit for any reason. This also means that you can be fired for any reason, provided it is not due to discrimination against a protected class.

"Protected class" usually includes people with disabilities, but provisions are made for people who are too disabled to do their job without reasonable accommodation. In other words, someone who is not able to lift more than 30 pounds won't get hired as a furniture mover, but might get hired by the same company as a typist. Someone who was hired as a mover but then lost their lifting ability will lose their job. But reasonable accomodation could mean getting voice-to-text software for the typing-impaired, thus allowing them to do their job and not get fired.

Of course, there are all sorts of add-ons like worker's comp, etc. that keep workers from getting screwed in situations like that.

For the record, IANAL. While I did do tech support for an HR dept. for a couple years, in no way do I imply that this makes me an expert in employment law. I could be wrong, and often am.

i guess that all depends on how you earn a living. for me this is a problimatic ruling because i am a software engineer/programmer. i spent many years of my life in school getting trained to work on a computer. its what i do. if i could not earn a living (in what i have spent my highschool/college training for) because of RSI i would sure as hell consider myself disabled. sure i can go and get a job doing somthing else but by the time you have RSI you have more then likely built a career and a life around the computer. i would compare it to a construction worker with a bad back, they have the ability to work on computers and do other jobs but the fact of the matter is that they would get dissabilty, because they cant do their job.

I have a step brother who is quadraplegic. He can move his arms, but not his hands. He types using gloves with a 'stick' on each glove. He IS disabled but he can still type, just not very fast. In fact, he is the webmaster at a major university.

It's hard to say whether or not she should qualify for being disabled since she will live almost a completely normal life, but she should definately get worker's compensation.

And getting a termination letter from her employer like that...That's just a cruel thing to do. What jerks!

Someone loses their ability to work in their profession and, for most, participate in their hobby/mental exercise/what-have-you then they are disabled. How does this not apply to typing? Unless someone wants to get me a nerve implant right to my brain/spinal cord, Ima fight that if anything happens to my hands to where I can't type.

PC-ness aside, there is a significant difference between someon who requires some accomodation for a diminished capacity and someone who is unable to perform the minimum required tasks of their employment.

The employer's obligation is to ignore dimished capabilities that do not affect job performance. They can't refuse to hire someone on the basis of an incidental disability. The most certainly can refuse to hire someone who is incapable of performing the essential job tasks.

I don't argue that a person who is unable to type isn't going to face fewer job prospects. I just think it misses the point-- laws against discrimination are expected to protect people from discrimination, not force employers to find work for disabled people.

Someone loses their ability to work in their profession and, for most, participate in their hobby/mental
exercise/what-have-you then they are disabled. How does this not apply to typing? Unless someone wants to
get me a nerve implant right to my brain/spinal cord, Ima fight that if anything happens to my hands to where I
can't type.

So she chose a profession that she could not perform adequately, and now wants others to be forced to allow her to do it anyway. Does this apply to any skill, or just typing? Can I be a sprinter if I weigh 300 pounds and can't run? Can I be deaf and have a job that requires talking on the phone all day? Can I be blind and direct traffic?

Oh, but typing is different - it's a physical activity that some people can't perform a great deal of. OK, how about construction or garbage collection. Jobs that require constant physical exertion. Many people can't handle this. Should the ADA protect them?

The ADA was meant to protect people who, say, are in a wheelchair, and could do their job if only there were a ramp up the stairs so they can get into the office. That's a far stretch from someone who lacks a basic requirement for the job.

Obviously the comments posted here will all be biased against the proposed new law. After all, you have to be able to type to post here, don't you? Most of the SlashDot readers type for a living anyway. That really limits those with an opposing view from being represented in this discussion.

Now imagine if one day you stopped being able to type... Its not impossible... Maybe you suffered nerve damage in your hands, or you lost a few fingers in a farming accident. There are lots of ways to gain this particular disability. You wouldn't be able to work, you wouldn't be able to play computer games, and you wouldn't be able to chat on IRC. Worst of all, you wouldn't be able to post comments about your plight on message boards like SlashDot that have no provisions for those suffering from this particular disability.

If you would have actually read the article you would realise that it is case 3..... Used to be able to type but can not anymore due to a RSI.
I can't believe how many people post w/out a clue of what the story is actually about

Unless employers are required to make reasonable
accomodations for disabled employees, they will
preferentially hire those with no disability.
But many people with a minor disability can still
be much more productive in their chosen profession
than they would be doing some other work which
their disability does not impact. By the
government guaranteeing a level playing field
(by prohibiting taking the disability into
account, not by prohibiting choosing the person
who is most qualified in all other regards,
ignoring the disability), we allow people not
to be blacklisted from their careers because of
a disability that could be reasonably accomodated.
Those who claim the free market will resolve this
would say that the employee, who is less
productive than employees without a disability,
should be willing to work for less, but still
earn more than they would outside their
profession. But most large organizations
have standard salary scales, and could not
make special deals with everyone based on
their perceived productivity. So the free
market does not work in this case.
People who liken the inability to type due
to RSI to the inability to type due to laziness
or stupidity are bad people. And the stupid
should not be discriminated against either.
Some people may have misunderstood the article -
the employer provided some minimal accomodation
(chairs, etc - these are just paying lip service
to the need to prevent RSI), but refused to
provide speech-to-text capability, saying it
was an unreasonable accomodation. Or even worse,
they claimed that the disability didn't fall under
the ADA, and therefore they didn't even have to
make reasonable accomodations.

First, being a reporters is different from being a software developer. A reporter deals in a human language -- words are not as mutable as variable names. Blower is a old newspaper term describing a person who takes news reports over the phone and types them up.

Second, with an RSI, it does not only prevent one from using a keyboard, but when severe, you have problems sleeping (from the pain), and eating (because you keep droping things), or shopping, because your hand strength goes to almost nothing.

You also have to keep in mind that the ADA analysis is a fact specific test that is done on a case by case basis. There are circuits that ruled in one case that CTS is a disability, and in another ruled that it was not. This does not say if they also considered the state disability laws - which have a different standard for disability.

Consider, a blind person can dress him/herself, do laundry, make a bed, even shop in some cases. They cannot drive, of course, however they can get around by walking or bus. And in some cases, someone with carpal tunnel or similar may not be able to drive safely, as the pain it causes their wrists can be extreme.

There was one comment on slashdot recently about a man who owned a small computer company, who was completely blind, but walked around without a cane or any sort of guide, built, troubleshooted, took apart, added to, computers by touch, using brail or text-to-speech for interaction with the computers, etc.
However, if they had fired this reporter because she'd gone blind, she would likely have won without trouble.
Voice recognition is COMPLETELY viable, even in 1997 it was usable, esspecialy if the user had some use of their hands to allow for manual corrections when neccisary. All they would have had to do was spend a few hundred dollars on Dragon Naturally Speaking, and a few bucks on a microphone, and everything would have been fine.

Okay, well the ADA doesn't apply if the person is a reporter, because presumibly a reporter has many other tasks than simply typing stuff into the computer (research etc.) and could concievably simply write longhand and get someone to copy it. Therefore inability to type is not a substantial limitation.

Now reading the decision this appears to be a very narrowly constructed decison. The court doesn't appear to make any statements about typing ability in general, only in the specific case of this specific reporter.

That would presumibly leave open avenues of pursuit for other professions, programmers -- typists (are there any of these anymore?), keypunch operators, stenographers and whatnot.

She complains in 1994, so the paper buys her special office furniture to help. A few years later she complains and they give her an extended leave to recouperate. A few years later she complains again and the paper decides that they can't do anything else to help her so they let her go.

This is discriminatory? It seems to me that they bent over backwards to help her do her work. About the only thing they didn't do is inject painkillers directly into her wrists.

What are they supposed to do? They publish newspapers and are not in the healthcare business. Staff writers that, after that much accomodation, can't write are a liability.

Perhaps they should have made her do weight training excercises to prevent this kind of injury. Weight training has been shown to increase bone density, muscle mass and tone, joint stability and more. Face it: the human body was not designed for desk work.

I'd have to agree. My sympathy for this woman vanished as soon as it said that she'd sued for discrimination. It sounds like the newspaper did everything they could for her (including trying to reassign her), and then let her go when it became clear that she couldn't do the job. It seems like the only way they could avoid being sued would be to pay her a salary for doing nothing.

While it's clearly important that employers do as much as they can to support employees with disadvantages, such as this woman, there comes a point when they simply can't do the job any more. It's not their fault, but at the same time, it's not the employer's fault, and they certainly don't deserve to be taken to court over it.

I've seen companies bend over backwards to accommodate workers with disabilities. But at the end of the day, they need employees who can produce for them. It sucks, but there are some jobs that physically can't be done by some people. I for instance can't juggle, so I don't work in a circus.

But the difference here (or so it appears) is that the job caused the disability. In general, Worker's Comp [in the US] is pretty simple...if something you do on the job prevents you from continuing to work, the company gets to pay you your salary to either not work or to work wherever they can find a place for you (even if that position would not normally have that payrate). So, yes, this is a job that she physically cannot do...but she cannot do it because she has been doing the job. So it is the company's responsibility to take care of her in the same way that the Air Force should take care of a mechanic with 30 years' service who gets carpal tunnel and can't turn a wrench anymore./p.

GOD I am so sick and tired of COMPANIES having to cater to all you wimpy-ass people who think is is your GOD GIVEN RIGHT to work at a company and EXPECT them to BEND OVER BACKWARDS to make sure YOU are taken care of. THAT IS NOT THEIR RESPONSIBILTY. If they do, GREAT! That's a company I want to work for (like pensions and healthcare). YOU get PAID for your work. Period! Anything beyond that is gravy from your comapny. If you can PROVE that the POLICY or ENVINRONMENT of the company DIRECTLY CAUSED her problem and did nothing to recify then you have a case. Not here. If you develope a medical problem that is NOT due to SPECIFIC actions that the company has you perform, I do not see where she has a leg to stand on. Typing is type. No matter WHERE she goes, she cant type. WHY is her current employer responsible for her problem? It would develope ANYWHERE she typed for a living. All you whiners out there GROW UP AND BECOME ADULTS AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF!
p.s. I have owned several business and have a lot of experience here.

OK - hold on a second. Its one thing if some random burger flipper can't type. Its a whole other story if your career involves typing. How many of you here saying 'well of course its no disablility' would be saying the same thing if you lost your fingers in an accident? Your programmers, IT types, etc. WTF would you do? Use of a computer today is required in most fields - sure she can work at McDonalds, but thats a serious impact to her career and incoming earning potential.

I've been there. Anyone who has read my posts may notice that I often swap letters in words (especially the - its often teh) Theres a reason and its not dyslexia:) A few years ago, I was working in teh yard after a big storm hit. Lots of trees down, etc. Was finally getting the stumps to a burn pile to get rid of them. As I was rolling a stump onto the pile, it rolled forward, grabbed my glove and rolled onto my hand. A small sharp piece of metal or something punctured my wrist (1/4' max) and severed 3 tendons to my fingers on my left hand - I couldn't move them at all.

After surgery, I had months of rehab to slowly get the tendons back into shape without ripping them apart. Typing was out for some time. I was an IT manager who did about 50% mgmt and 50% seniuor IT tech work due to staffin glevels. It was a HUGE imparment to my work. This was in 97 or so, and I tried ViaVoice and stuff. It kinda worked, but was brutal and slow. Todays technology may be better so this is moot, but in 97 it wasn't up to par.

My productivity was greatly impacted during my recovery. I can understand where this woman is coming from. Due to a failin gin the therapy of my fingers, the tendons for 2 fingers fused at the repair site and I've lost about 70-80% of the independence of them (ie they move together often) So for some reason I often swap letters in words as I type not even realizing it since my brain has been wired to move my fingers to type in such a way for years. My point is, inability to type is a serious issue!

In working for her employer she injured herself by working at a workstation that wasn't ergonomic. She got CT really bad (my Mom had it - she couldn't even pick up a coffee cup at the worst - she finally had her hand and wrist cut open and they managed to reduce the pain so she sould sitll code) Then her company let her go (though its nice they did try to accomodate her) Bottom line is she is seriously disabled and its got her fired. She deserves disability in this day and age - sorry - call me a bleeding hear tliberal if you want (you'd be wrong) but inability to type is a huge imparment. She'd have to have someone to transcribe her stuff which to a company vastly increases the cost of her as an employee - not likely in this day and age.

So before scoffing at this, just think what it would be like if YOU couldn't type. Sure you MIGHT be able to improvise and such - but your productivity would go WAY down - would your employer just accept that or get rid of you?

Just a clarification - I'm not saying my letter swapping is a disabliity - I structured that paragraph badly. I just mentioned it cause I've often had folks laugh at my spelling of some words in my posts.

My point was when my entire wrist and hadn were in a therapy contraption I was unable to type with my left hand for about 2 months. I can type fine now save the letter swapping thing. But when I was in therapy, I still had my right hand to type with! And it was STILL a huge hit to productivity and such. Being unable to type at all - well thats a huge deal. Sure, we all have manager swho get ahead only hunt and pecking, but lets be serious - in this day and age where you type lots each day - hunt a peck isn't gonna cut it;)

You should try the right-handed (single hand) Dvorak keyboard layout. It's specifically designed for people who have limited or no use of their left hand. I personally use the regular Dvorak keyboard and I love it. I wish I could use it at work but just try convincing a corporate drone that keyboard layout might have something to do with ergonomics... It's not that much faster to type on, but it's much more comfortable and doesn't require nearly as much finger movement.

Maybe your productivity would go up and your Carpal Tunnel would get better if you spent less time writing 1000 word essays in the/. comments section

Maybe if you read my post you'd have seen I don't have carpal tunnel - I had an accident that rendered my left hand unusable for typing for about 2 months. I can type fine now except for occasional swapped characters.

Very few people--even those outside of the USA--really know how microwaves work. People think, "Thing goes in cold. Thing comes out hot." By analogy, "Cat goes in cold. Cat come out hot and dry" (flaw in logic noted; remember, these people are illogical, too).

Where is a person supposed to learn that microwave energy can boil a pet's blood and cook its brain probably causing excruciating pain for the last few moments of its life? How does a person come to understand the interaction between microwave energy and the water throughout an object?

Stupidity is a global issue. It's not just the Americans who have reached "the lowest of all intellectual standards."

Additionally, the real issue is not whether or not a person can type but whether or not losing the ability to type crushes a person's career. How would you feel if you suddenly are forced to give up a programmer's comfortable salary? Is it possible to find a similar salary in some other career (that doesn't require typing)? More seriously, what if your hands are amputated, and you can no longer support your family? What then? Should you be forced to live in an alley finding dinner in someone else's trash?

How would you feel if you suddenly are forced to give up a programmer's comfortable salary?

It would suck, no doubt. But just b/c i WANT to make money doing something i'd like to do, doesn't mean its my RIGHT. My salary depends on how much my company values me, if they suddenly think i have no value (or even all companies think programmers are valueless), well its time to retrain and start doing something else. Obviously i'd like the same salary, but who said it was my right to find another job with a similar salary?

Also, i highly doubt your hands would become amputated from working on a keyboard...

Where is a person supposed to learn that microwave energy can boil a pet's blood and cook its brain probably causing excruciating pain for the last few moments of its life? How does a person come to understand the interaction between microwave energy and the water throughout an object?

Um, maybe in High School? In HS physics, do you not learn about waves? Besides, you can heat a pizza so that its hot enough to give burns, maybe that temp. is too hot for your cat too?

If you'd read the article, you'd have seen that reportedly 50% of jobs in the U.S. require daily interaction with a computer. And let me tell you, precious few of them are voice-activated:)

It's all well and good to say that you could just get a new job, but look at it the other way around: if you've trained your whole life (she worked there for 24 years) at a manual task, and become disabled at it, you can't just switch over to digging ditches. Would you be willing to throw away 24 years of your career and start fresh, competing against kids that just got out of college, because of a debilitating physical condition brought on by your employer?

I do have mixed feelings about this case, though, because I can't see that the employer could have done much differently. 24 years ago nobody knew about RSI or things like that; and apparently as soon as she let them know that she had a problem they provided some accomodations to help out. This is almost a case where nobody could really win, just because most of the damage was done before anyone could have known the harm that would result from her working circumstances.

I'm glad to see that the court didn't hold their initial attempts to help her out to be a recognition of a disability; like the article said, that would place employers in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation where they might be more likely to not do anything to help alleviate workplace health issues like this.

"...If you'd read the article, you'd have seen that reportedly 50% of jobs in the U.S. require daily interaction with a computer. And let me tell you, precious few of them are voice-activated:)..."
But what kind of interaction? The punk at the counter at Burger King interacts with computers; but would you make her a programmer? All most people do -- including my boss -- is check their email or open a Word document or tap a touch screen like the geniuses working fast food.
But wait...by opposing this, I'm throwing away my chance to use ADA to get into Pro Baseball. Afterall, it's not my fault I can't hit a 90mph fastball. I must be able to blame it on someone else....

and through your employer's negligence you lost that ability, and they threw you out on the street for it.

What negligence? This employee, and NOT all the other employees, got RSI. The employer even made efforts to mitigate or prevent the effects of RSI when the employee started feeling the symptoms.

...and you may have problems finding another job if you suddenly can't perform that duty.

Suddenly? This employee kept doing the things that led to the RSI in the first place, for several more years! Why didn't she think of a career change sooner? I quit retail sales work because some of those people made me sick to my stomach. She had actual PAIN, and continued despite it.

If you do something that injures yourself, it isn't a disability, it's a fscking INJURY. Nobody disputes that she's injured, just that she's disabled. She sued to get her self-inflicted injury declared a disability because the company couldn't have her do the work she wanted to do. She would certainly have qualified for worker's comp, but not disability.

you could try something like learning that "Stress" doesn't reffer to EMOTIONAL stress in repetitive stress injury
it refers to stress put on the PHYSICAL components of the hands/wrists/arms, STRESS is what makes a stick break if you bend it enough.

This is, in my humble legal opinion, a very bad decision. The majority ignores that the disability claimed (carpal tunnel syndrome) prevented her from performing in her chosen profession in the manner in which she used to perform, that is, by doing her own typing of stories. The majority instead looks to see if CTS affected her life activities as a whole, which I believe is an improperly broad test.

If this is the law, it means that if you are disabled in a way that affects your work, you as a worker are at risk of losing your job unless that same disability affects a substantial part of your entire life's activities. Bottom line - you had better be SERIOUSLY hurt or you are out of luck.

The ADA was enacted to make sure employers provided reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities. Letting the employer off the hook in this case, where the employer determined that accommodations were not available and most importantly, where the job was a substantial cause of the disability may be an exercise in legal reasoning, but it certainly isn't justice.

The company made accommodations, including workstation adjustments,
new chairs, modified work schedules and a gym membership. She filed additional claims several years later when her condition
worsened and the company granted her an extended leave.
In 1997, the company contemplated voice recognition technology and reassignment as alternatives but ultimately concluded they
were not viable.

Working in a particular job is not a right (most times), but the employer should not be able to decide unilaterally what accommodations they will make and which ones they will not. What you are essentially saying is that people who are otherwise talented and effective in their jobs can be forced to find other jobs when they are injured BECAUSE of the one they chose? Keep in mind that their choice of new jobs will now be severely limited because of the injury.

Why couldn't she dictate her stories to a secretary? I always thought the most important skills for good writing were the ability to think clearly and to have a mastery of the language in which you write.

By the way, I know a LOT of civil servants who will be able to tell you that working in SOME jobs IS a right....in certain jobs, even a Constitutional right.

Working in a particular job is not a right (most times), but the employer should not be able to decide unilaterally what accommodations they will make and which ones they will not.

Of course the employer should be able to decide unilaterally. Once upon a time America was the land of the free, and people were able to choose for themselves which things were important in an employee and which were not. Then we had laws which banned discrimination, which supposedly meant you had to treat people who were equally qualified the same and ignore irrelevant characteristics. Now, with the ADA, people who cannot do the job as well, or cost more to do the job, are supposed to be treated "equally"? What a joke.

It reminds me of the Vonnegut story of Harrison Bergeron, where people who are better at something are artificially handicapped so that everybody is equal. If employeres are allowed to consider my characteristics which make me good at a job, they should be allowed to consider those that make me bad for a job, too, including those I'm born with or those that I acquire by accident.

If this employer is wrong, so what. There are four million other employers in the country. Surely if something is not important for a job, most other employers will agree with you.

It shouldn't be the responsibility of every individual or every business to have the wisdom of Solomon. Fairness in the private sector comes about from choice.

Police officer, fireman... generally any civil service position for which there is an exam and strict requirements as to how people are hired and/or fired. Firing someone in violation of those requirements can be a taking of property (your job) in violation of the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution

You don't get it, it's not emotional/mental stress, it's physical stress, the same thing that makes a stick break if you bend it enough. Typing for years on keyboards can cause Repetitive Stress Injury, this is where the repetitive nature of the task over long periods causes stress on the nerves, muscles, etc. in the hands wrists and arms.
RSI has also been seen in professions completely unrelated to computers, such as a person working in a factory doing the same thing for years, even a blacksmith making horseshoes for years could aquire RSI.